Park Avenue

Park Avenue is a wide New York City boulevard which stretches for 10.9 miles from Third Avenue in Fordham, The Bronx in the north to Astor Place in Cooper Square, Manhattan in the south. It was originally known as Fourth Avenue, carrying the tracks of the New York and Harlem Railroad starting in the 1830s. It was renamed "Park Avenue" in 1860, and Cornelius Vanderbilt transformed it into a boulevard with a median strip that covered the railroad's ventilation grates. During the 20th century, it became known as a famous and wealthy thoroughfare.